Conventional laundering techniques for the cleaning and treatment of fabric articles such as garments have long involved both traditional aqueous based washing and a technique commonly referred to as “dry cleaning”. Traditional aqueous based washing techniques have involved immersion of the fabric articles in a solution of water and detergent or soap products followed by rinsing and drying. However, such conventional immersion cleaning techniques have proven unsatisfactory on a wide range fabric articles that require special handling and/or cleaning methods due to fabric content, construction, etceteras, that is unsuitable for immersion in water.
Accordingly, the use of the laundering method of “dry cleaning” has been developed. Dry cleaning typically involves the use of non-aqueous, lipophilic fluids as the solvent or solution for cleaning. While the absence of water permits the cleaning of fabrics without the potential disastrous side effects water may present, these lipophilic fluids do not perform well on hydrophilic and/or combination soils.
Because these lipophilic fluids are typically used in “neat” form (i.e. they contain no additional additives), dry cleaners must often perform pre-treating and/or pre-spotting to remove tough soils from fabrics prior to the dry cleaning cycle. Further, nothing is typically added to boost “whiteness” or “brightness” in fabrics that are dry-cleaned as can be observed from “dingy” or “dull” fabrics returned from a dry cleaner. It would be desirable to add bleaching to the lipophilic fluid treatment regimen in order to increase the lipophilic fluids' brightening, whitening, and/or soil removal capability thereby reducing or eliminating the need for pre-treating and/or pre-spotting.
Many fabrics and textiles highly valued by the consumer (e.g., silk) are prone to undue damage when exposed to water in large quantities. For this reason garments made from such fabric and textiles must be dry cleaned. One limitation of dry cleaning is the difficulty with which many commonly encountered soils (stains) are removed. Solvent systems that contain oxidation technology (i.e., bleaching systems) for effectively decolorizing the soil are thus an improvement over current dry cleaning methods for removing such soil.
Accordingly, the need remains for bleach-containing care and treatment regimens for use with lipophilic fluid compositions. These regimens should be capable of delivering enhanced brightening, whitening, and/or soil removal.